Disney Confirms Black Rock Layoffs

Disney Interactive's internal development company, Black Rock Studios, is reducing its workforce, but is continuing to work on its unannounced project.

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Disney Interactive confirmed today that they are reducing the workforce from its Brighton, UK based internal development studio Black Rock. Earlier today, Eurogamer reported that 40 jobs were at risk at the company, but Disney has since confirmed to VG247 that these jobs are safe. However, a further 100 jobs are at risk, apparently.

The reason for the layoffs is Disney's changing priorities, including a push towards freemium entertainment. A source speaking to Eurogamer said that "the inactive portion of the studio has been expecting redundancies for months, so this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone. [...] It seems Disney have been unable to provide us with a project to work on, and our concept pitches clearly haven't gone down well (despite there being many of them)."

Unfortunately for fans of Black Rock's explosive racer, one of those pitches was a sequel to Split/Second.

"After Split/Second wrapped," the source commented, "we started work on Split/Second 2 pre-production which was cancelled last december due to Disney Interactive's new management and their changing priorities."

This is a real shame, as Split/Second is one of the only racing games in existence to end on a cliffhanger. Now it seems we won't get the chance to find out what the ending was all about.